Binary Swan

I have tracked the evolution of the Rockstar Games version of the open world genre over the years with much interest. They are unmatched in their ability to create cohesive worlds rich in atmosphere that beg to be explored and played with. With each new release Rockstar have also attempted to develop a much richer guided narrative, with mixed results. However even with their track record Rockstar has been unable to reconcile the player freedom in the open world space with the constraints of providing a fleshed out character-driven story. This criticism of their games has been presented by other in more detail elsewhere so I will put it simply: In Red Dead Redemption my violent rampage with rifle and lasso is not the most suitable bridge between the chapters of the story of John Marston.

As many will already know Red Dead Redemption is an apple that does not fall far from the tree that is Rockstar Games’ open world formula. It’s single player portion does contain refinements that go a ways to addressing the above failing but regardless there is still ample ammunition for anyone who wishes to take that position. At the same time there is the multiplayer free roam portion of Red Dead Redemption. It comes tantalizingly close to fulfilling that dreamy promise of the ideal Rockstar multiplayer mode where anything might be possible. In free roam the whim of player and posse defines the next set of actions and stories are created from the conditions set up by Rockstar at the start. It is like some mad scientist version of Conway’s Game of Life…with horses. Through the lense of this maniacal creation I can build up a narrative where I will stop a hard driven pursuit to add to my collection of local flora or pause to share the sunset with a friend before blowing their head off just as they begin to describe what we were sharing. I am finding this method of narrative creation to be extremely satisfying and it has inevitably led me to compare it with the completely separate single player experience. And that is to be expected isn’t it?

I have always enjoyed that this medium has demarcation zones created by the player between our single and multiplayer experiences. With few exceptions games today provide us with easy ways to do this. The separation of Gerard as multiplayer cowboy from hell and Gerard as John Marston is as easy as paying attention to the two options provided when the title screen loads. It has even reached a point on the development side where games like Starcraft 2 and Medal of Honor utilise separate development teams for each experience. There are few brave enough to entertain the idea that one could merge the multiplayer ladder climb with the singleplayer narrative(?) of Modern Warfare 2. It is not worth that kind of effort and the reason is clear. These are parts of the same whole, the game that sits on your shelf, but we separate these experiences because they are simply not the same. Players are accustomed to having these dissociated story’s within a single game but I don’t think we go far enough.

Why must we join the John Marston of the open world of Red Dead Redemption with that of the John Marston of cutscenes and directed missions?

Are we compelled beyond our power to the tyranny of our avatar’s appearance or who inhabits the virtual space around us?

Do our stories really require a level of consistency that will place a limit to the interactivity we so greatly treasure?

Videogames provide us with a system to play with, not to be controlled by. The process of forming my own story through my play is mine to structure and control, and at times to edit. No boasting Halo player ever speaks of his defeats so I feel I have some small license to separate my stories. Red Dead Redemption continues the tradition of providing an expansive and atmospheric world for me to explore. I will make my own separate stories with the online free mode, with my random actions in singleplayer and with my connection to a strong character in John Marston. I am empowered in demarcating my time with a videogame because I am the player. If this is to be my escapism then I will craft many varied and interesting experiences and I look forward to any game that provides me with a Game of Life-and-then-some to do so.

I support the tyranny of player over game.

I was a child with a vivid imagination. I spent many hours in my backyard tree, defending my kingdom from invading nasties. My custom-built Lego spaceship took me far into the galaxy and back again, always with many stories to tell of battles with aliens and treasures uncovered. These fantastical adventures spawned from a special place inside my head, a place of joy and comfort but also a place where I was the winner. I controlled the fantasy and thus I knew that no matter how dire the circumstances, I would come out on top. I would win the day. I do not believe that such an experience is uncommon during our lost childhood years and I think this is why many videogames take a certain form.

Playing as Faith I will save my sister.

Playing as Mario I will defeat Bowser.

Playing as Darsil, the stealthy Dunmer mage I will fulfill the prophecies and defeat Dagoth Ur to save all of Morrowind from his cult-like Sixth House.

Or maybe I won’t but that is because I have made my own quest, that will be fulfilled on the streets of Liberty City.

There are so many points when we play videogames that we know we will win. They exist to make us feel good, to get lost in a world like our childhood fantasies. To end in victory. If games are an extension of our imagination then they will carry that assumption of success unless deliberately exorcised by conscious thought. It is because of this that I feel the game industry as yet cannot bring itself to make a good piece of horror gaming. The escapism that so many gamers find is equivalent to the catharsis provided by classic moments of horror cinema where the audience might just scream out loud. We have no need to be cast adrift like the audience after Psycho’s shower scene no matter how many times Infinity Ward designed AI kills your floating gun portal to it’s world. We will be back in that world, connected and fighting on to eventual victory. There might be some twist, we might even die. But we will not lose.

Horror is about feeling out of control, accepting that the world might be a place where you cannot win and where you might not be able to escape. By referencing the many audio and visual artifacts of the cinematic traditions games can create unnerving moment after unnerving moment, repeated over and over. But this ends with your escape, alive and successful, no less empowered than the triumphant return of Abe to Rapture Farms to liberate his fellow Mudokan. We need to source another segment of our conscious experience in order to create true pieces of horror gaming. If games come from our imagination where we are in control then maybe we need to search our experience for something altogether different. Maybe we need to remember our nightmares and what it means to have one. Those moments of our dreams we are out of control and yet still on an amazing journey.

For better or worse the material possessions that surround me contribute to how I construct my identity. They tell the story of the type of person I am, the type I person I have been and hint at the paths I may one day walk down. Books wedged up against videogame cases meet clothing strewn across my futon bed and the university degrees hanging next to an old 3 hour parking sign are all contained in my bedroom but are themselves containers of a different sort. They hold the undefinable elements of my personality, they are vessels of memories. Looking at Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in my hands I conjure up not only the story it tells, but the time I spent reading this book, two lazy afternoons at work, and how that has influenced my thoughts on counter culture, a certain moment in history and the writing of fiction. This one item holds with it an experience from my life but also the means in which I define my future experiences, how I construct and internalize my personal narrative.

If someone every told me that they play Torchlight for the authored narrative I would probably end the conversation. However I will immediately follow up that statement by saying that narrative is what has kept me going back to the game over and over again. This narrative I speak of does not involve chasing down Alric or the fate of the town of Torchlight, it is about the adventurer alchemist known as Ytill. If Runic Games diverted resources away from building a compelling narrative for their dungeon crawler it most definitely went towards the loot system and as a result it creates a means by which I as the player can create a story for Ytill much in the way I create my own story, through the items that he obtains, uses and keeps.

The story of Ytill for ten levels was linked to the weapon pictured above, an unassuming sword that outclassed any other I would find for hours to come. My growth as a character was linked to this item as my slightly melee focused Alchemist became a hand to hand combat machine because of this sword. This item, real in the gameworld, held not only the gaming moments of victory over hordes of “evilplacespawn” but also the ways that Ytill grew and changed and how I internalised the rules and systems of Torchlight. In the same way that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not just a simple book, this sword was not just an awesome weapon. Many a time I would find new weapons, half hoping to find something better but secretly wishing for the opposite. So much of my narrative thus far was contained in this sword and thus when I found the Dismantling Sparkling Staff of the Bear with it’s higher damage per second, it was a moment of sadness. It was time to move on.

Much in the way my room tells a story of who I am, the items that Ytill uses and wears define my narrative in Torchlight. They are touchstones, memory markers and a means by which we as players can construct narratives through games like Torchlight, Borderlands and obviously Diablo. It is an active process different from other cultural forms. But this is not the end of the story of the sword, it now sits in the ingenious communal storage chest in the town of Torchlight, accessible to any character I chose to create. It waits for the time when Shaggy the level 2 Destroyer is ready, the time when I can once again be reminded of what my narrative in Torchlight, and what the future might hold.

The iPhone game space has been something of a revelation for me in 2009. It represents a healthy sized market for developers and a new economic model to be solved. The relatively lower risks also means that it is a great space to fearlessly explore new and interesting gameplay concepts and unlike games on other platforms there seems to be no collective consciousness surrounding it. There are no iPhone ‘classics’ to tell me what to expect.

When I load up a disc on my Xbox 360 I will know very quickly if a game meets the standards I hold for my home console experience. When I load a new App to play on my iPhone I do not know what to expect. This completely changes how I judge the games I play. I have enjoyed Spider because it was a perfect harmony of controls, visuals and storytelling quite literally in the palm of my hand. I have enjoyed Canabalt, Drop 7 and geoSpark for the simple mechanics that are infinitely replayable and supportive of a habit of listening to videogame podcasts. I have enjoyed re-releases like Passage, Beneath a Steel Sky and Dragon’s Lair because they show that good games are evergreen.

When I first purchased my Xbox 360 all I expected was games at a level above my Playstation 2 experience, an incremental improvement. In the iPhone’s case all I knew was I would be gaming much more. I could not compare the experience to anything else previous because almost everything about it feels so completely new. It is by no means the only portable gaming platform but it is the first in a long time that does not have the burden of expectation. I am not saying that it is the new holy grail of videogames either but I am glad that this new space has opened up. I am now more than ever, a gamer everywhere and I love the idea that my next treasured gaming memory might only be one less cup of coffee away.